Professional or college sports support a broad range of secondary competitions ranging from predicting the outcome of particular games to predicting the performance of a given player. Contests based upon player performances include the fantasy sports leagues such as fantasy baseball and fantasy football. In the fantasy sports leagues, sometimes called "rotisserie leagues", participants assume the position of an owner of an imaginary team. Prior to the beginning of a professional sport season, the owners conduct a "draft" of professional athletes to fill the roster of their team.
As in the professional sports leagues, the fantasy owners may trade players during the contest. Typically, after the draft, and throughout the season, trades are made between owners of those players not selected in the initial draft. The teams in a fantasy sports league typically accumulate a "won-lost" record by competing head to head against each of the other teams in the league. In a "game" between two teams, the team whose players performed better in the previous week is declared the winner. Typically, each team competes on the cumulative statistics of the drafted players.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,018,736 and 5,263,723 describe an interactive contest system using publication of newspapers and broadcast of events to enable fantasy owners to optimize scores obtained by a team through team member trades. However, the system is not interactive on a real time basis. As interaction with the contest system on a real time basis with the sporting events is characterized as being disadvantageous, the described contest system hence utilizes selection and trading of players based on periodic publication or broadcasts.
Periodic interaction of participants prevents optimization of team roster performance and enjoyment of the interactive system. In the above system, the participants only select and trade members after the event has ended for the day. For example, in a FANTASY NASCAR race, the participant must decide prior to the race whether to select or trade the racer. And then must wait until after the race is over to get the result of the race car driver's performance. If the system distributes scores for the number of other cars Petty passes, the participants must wait until the end of the day as to whether to keep or trade Petty.
On the other hand, if the system were to allow real time interaction, the participant could decide whether or not to keep Petty as he is passing other cars or being passed. If the participant believes that Petty will pass more cars, he or she may decide to keep Petty as a member of the team. If the participant believes that another car driver, such as Steve Andretti, will pass more cars than Petty, the participant can trade Petty for Andretti.
Once the participant has made a decision, he or she can watch the race with excitement as to whether that decision is the right or the wrong one. Further, as the race goes on, the participant can make more trades to optimize the performance of his or her team roster. By allowing a participant to interact in real time while the race is going on, the participant can better maximize the score values for his team, and experience more emotional and intellectual enjoyment compared to what is likely in a periodic interaction. Hence, there is a need for an interactive system allowing real time interaction as the event unfolds.